Guitar synthesis cheap 'n easy with Reaper

BMU

I think this is pretty neat:

Reaper's built-in guitar tuner (ReaTune) has the facility to send a MIDI event when the pitch changes. This can be used to trigger a synth. I didn't even have to figure out how to set it up, just searched the Reaper forums and there was a track template ready made.

I have no experience with real guitar synths using a dedicated Roland-style pickup, but I think this tracks OK? (Opinions from guitar synth users?)

Quick 'n dirty clip of the Canon Rock sweep arpeggios into Absynth 5:
http://www.box.net/shared/jfozt8ac9k

That clip is designed as a "stress test" - clearly it's picking up all the sloppiness of my playing :-[ as well as pick noises etc. But I think it's pretty useable. This could easily be cleaned up in the MIDI editor to sound decent, especially with slower material. I wouldn't REALLY want to use a guitar synth for full-out shredding.

I view this as a fantastic (cheap!) composition tool, to record ideas into the MIDI editor. And to spark creativity. This can probably be done with other DAWs too (??), I never tried it when I was using Cubase.

Oh yes, obviously it's monophonic. And it only tracks down to about C# - can make it go lower by increasing the ReaTune sampling 'window size' which is 20 ms at the moment, but that increases latency. At this setting there's nearly no noticeable latency.

Anyway, this had me pretty excited, just thought I'd share.

AlanRatcliffe

Cool that you can do that. There is also a software guitar synth VST floating around that can do the same.

The biggest difference between that and a proper 13-pin guitar synth is the guitar synth is hexaphonic so it can follow chords.

You are going to get glitches with any system when you use percussive synth sounds and your playing has to be ultra clean to even have a chance of getting away with it. Generally slightly slower attacks give you a cleaner result (but prohibit really fast playing) and if you are working in a sequencer for recording, editing the MIDI is always a good idea.

Hayden

Ah thats super cool! i am keen to get into using a guitar synth of some sort. just do not want to fork out millions for something like an axon guitar-synth or something similar. does anyone know what the name of the Guitar synth vst? i know it will be limited in that it wont be able to do chords but if i can use it for basic Midi instead of using a keyboard that would be great!

BMU

Hayden - the thread discussing this on the Reaper forums also mentioned some of the alternatives. Search on the Cockos Reaper forums.

BMU

Every once in a while, like yesterday, the clip I posted above gets played (I get notification from box.net). Strange, since the thread is months old and buried on page 4. Who are you, phantom listener? ?

Anyway still a cool trick so maybe worth a bump anyway, for all the new Reaper users around here. More often I just use the MIDI editor. But fooling around with this quasi-guitar synth can be pretty inspirational.

Squonk

I cheated and had a listen ? I am not your phantom listener, but I am registered on Box, so it should inform you that it was me!

Thanks for the info, will definitely have a bash

BMU

Hehe.

Oh yes - since posting this originally I realized tracking can be made a little less prone to high frequency glitches (like picking up string squeaks and harmonics) by putting a bandpass EQ around the guitar root frequency range (80 - 1380 Hz or so iirc). Not a magical fix but cleans tracking up quite a bit.

PS - the EQ has to be before (upstream of) the Reaper tuner in the signal chain obviously. Filter out unwanted notes before it gets translated to MIDI.

PPS - damping the strings with a hair squidgy thing helps too. You're not going to play open chords while doing this anyway (monophonic). But any shredder worth his salt knows that already. ?